Canadians’ complaints about the telecommunications companies that provide their wireless, internet, telephone and television services rose 73% in the second half of 2017, according to a new report by the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), a federal watchdog organization.
The Commission said it accepted 6,849 complaints between August 1, 2017 and January 31, 2018, a 73% increase from 3,955 complaints in the same period a year earlier, according to the independent telecom ombudsman’s mid-year report. The increased complaints came amidst allegations of misleading sales practices by telecommunications providers.
“That’s huge for an organization like ours,” CCTS Commissioner Howard Maker said in a news release. “We didn’t project that kind of an increase.”
This is the first report that includes complaints about television services after the CCTS’ mandate was expanded on September 1 of last year. Of the 846 complaints that included TV, only 230 were solely about TV with the remainder involving bundled services and packages.
The majority of the increase in complaints concerned the Internet (up 209% to 2,789) and wireless service (up 70.5% to 3,604). The top complaint was about non-disclosure or misleading information about contract terms. The second and third most persistent complaints were incorrect charges and inadequate quality of service.
“It’s always cause for concern when complaint numbers go up,” Mr. Maker said. “We can’t really say to what extent this is because of bad service provider behaviour, because there’s other factors. There’s consumer behaviour, there’s awareness of CCTS. All of those things factor into it.”
Bell received the most complaints at 2,275, followed by Rogers Communications Inc. at 707 and Telus Corp. at 511. Bell’s proportion of all complaints dropped 2.5 points to 33.2%, Rogers’ dropped 1.5 points to 10.3% and Telus’ increased 0.5 points to 7.5%.
